Considered as a healing practice—or a “tuning of mind and body”—Oliveros’s “Sonic Meditations” are, to an extent, unique in the history of musical experimentalism. In these works, experiments were not conducted on the music; the music was an experiment on the self. Anyone searching today for the complete box set of “Sonic Meditations” won’t find it, because, as the composer wrote, “music is a welcome by-product” of this composition. The experiments remain in each listener. Oliveros’s aims were clear: these works were intended to be transformational, even therapeutic, enacting lasting changes on the body and mind.

“Colors are something we experience, individually and collectively. But without our experience of color, science would have no reason to suspect its existence. There would just be fifty shades, or more likely fifty thousand shades, of electromagnetic waves. That is why even a Nobel Prize-winning biologist like Gerald Edelman tells us that reality is actually colorless; because he takes reality to be what science tells us it is, not what he experiences as an individual.”

“The horrific event could lead city officials to go after illegally converted warehouses across Oakland, especially as evidence mounts that building inspectors knew of numerous problems with the Ghost Ship property but didn’t take action. Already, Oakland tenants housed in similar spaces are receiving eviction notices, and Mayor Libby Schaaf announced that the city is considering new fire and emergency exit regulations for its buildings. But any decision to condemn residences where artists are living illegally or force their owners to bring them up to code has led to worries that Oakland might hemorrhage more artists as housing costs continue to rise.”

“Since the early 1980s schools have become ever more captivated by the idea that students must learn a set of generalised thinking skills to flourish in the contemporary world – and especially in the contemporary job market. Variously called ‘21st-century learning skills’ or ‘critical thinking’, the aim is to equip students with a set of general problem-solving approaches that can be applied to any given domain; these are lauded by business leaders as an essential set of dispositions for the 21st century. Naturally, we want children and graduates to have a set of all-purpose cognitive tools with which to navigate their way through the world. It’s a shame, then, that we’ve failed to apply any critical thinking to the question of whether any such thing can be taught.”

“Are big publishers unwilling to take risks any more? Increasingly, ‘risky’ authors, those who’ve been rejected over and over again by traditional publishers or dozens of agents, are being picked up by small presses whose modus operandi is to take risks on literature that is exciting, innovative, or that they deem important either stylistically or politically. Then the big publishers swoop in and profit from the hard work and risk-taking of the small presses.”

In a story that begins with the director’s near-death from drugs and asthma in 1978, Stephen Galloway follows the project through legal troubles (complicated), money troubles (recurring), and weather troubles (terrifying) – with the happy ending of a screening for Pope Francis and 200 teary-eyed Jesuits.

In the UK there’s a perception that US-style fundraising won’t work there. But as government and corporate funding for the arts gets scarcer, trying to get private philanthropists to give more is getting energy. Here are eight myths about fundraising in the UK.

The interaction between the right and left hemispheres “enables us to ‘get’ the joke because puns, as a form of word play, complete humor’s basic formula: expectation plus incongruity equals laughter.”

It’s a 1720 instrument by the inventor himself, Bartolomeo Cristofori, and Dongshok Shin plays one of the earliest pieces written for it. As long as you don’t expect the timbre of a Steinway grand (or the equal-temperament tuning Steinways typically use), the Cristofori sounds pretty good. (video)

“The online translation tool recently started using a neural network to translate between some of its most popular languages – and the system is now so clever it can do this for language pairs on which it has not been explicitly trained. To do this, it seems to have created its own artificial language.”

Using the second person, an interactive feature by Joanna Klein walks the reader through the hive, the hunt for pollen, the tastes and smells (powerful) and sights (not so much) and movements of apian existence.

Zoologist Antone Martinho: “Were I not an animal behaviour researcher, I would hardly notice; but because I am, I constantly ask myself: why do I treat my pets like thinking, conscious companions, and the ducklings in my lab like feathered robots? The reluctance of my field to engage seriously with animal consciousness is, I believe, holding back our efforts to truly understand their behaviour.”

Last month the conservative youth group Turning Point USA launched this website to identify academics who (in the opinion of Turning Pointers) “advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” (Last week George Yancy wrote an Op-Ed for the New York Times about finding his name on it.) Now, saying “this is the sort of company we wish to keep,” more than 100 professors at Notre Dame have signed an open letter asking to be included.

“Redux includes two lists of radical thinkers: those of the past and present, respectively. The past list includes blurbs about influential thinkers from Socrates to Thomas Jefferson to Anna J. Cooper to Alan Turing, with some perhaps unexpected entries. An entry on Jesus of Nazareth, for example, reads, ‘Notorious radical and troublemaker, taught the poor, executed by the state.'”

Boston’s Tony Award-winning Huntington Theatre Company, with an annual operating budget of $15M, seeks a dynamic, experienced Director of Development to lead a talented staff and partner with a … [Read More...]

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Responsible for creating/implementing communications strategies that help to achieve the CSOA’s overarching goal of growing awareness and support for the Orchestra and CSOA activities in Chicago and … [Read More...]

The College of Performing Arts (CoPA) at The New School (consisting of the Mannes School of Music, The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, and The School of Drama) invites applications for a … [Read More...]

Start with an idea to engage with a full spectrum of contemporary performing and visual arts, creativity, and the human experience. Take a decommissioned factory and create a destination to which … [Read More...]

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Austin Opera presents an art form as adventurous and spirited as Austin itself. With a repertoire of new American works and opera’s most beloved stories, its critically acclaimed productions achieve … [Read More...]

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“Former Shakespeare’s Globe artistic director Dominic Dromgoole has teamed up with producer Nica Burns to launch a theatre company focused on classic playwrights. Called Classic Spring, it will celebrate the work of proscenium playwrights, including Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, staging their plays in the theatres they wrote for.”

A mid-century modernist who loved puzzles and puns, Schwartz wrote one piece called By George that spliced together snippets by Georges Gershwin and Handel and another called Elevator Music that had the audience riding in the titular conveyance while musicians played portions of the score on various floors.

“Contemporary dance company Rambert has announced an artistic development partnership with the Dutch National Ballet to nurture choreographers and composers from both companies. The partnership will begin with a joint programme of exchange between both companies and the artists working within them.”

“TV is now enjoying a vogue of being cool, but the great era of TV cool was the 1950s. You could catch Miles and John Coltrane on TV, and jazz was all over its soundtracks. That and the movies were the mediums with the broadest and deepest reach in popular culture, and they brought jazz to millions in America and around the world. It wasn’t that they had to convert audiences into thinking jazz was cool, it was that jazz was inherently cool and hip, and movies and television used that to signify their own place on a spectrum of style, and even rebellion.”

“Faced with the pending inauguration, Greg Allen said in his statement, ‘I could no longer stand by and let my most effective artistic vehicle be anything but a machine to fight Fascism.’ His new company ‘will be comprised entirely of people of color, LBTQ+, artist/activist women, and other disenfranchised voices in order to combat the tyranny of censorship and oppression.’ That explanation was received with ire and disbelief by Neo-Futurist company members, current and past, who say the troupe is now more diverse than it’s ever been, and the breakup is not political but personal—rooted in a long-suppressed history of problems between Allen and the theoretically democratic ensemble that he formed.”

In an interview with The Stage, Wilson was asked if the West End needed a greater variety of theatre sizes. He responded: “Yes we do. And the reason is that the big theatres, progressively the smaller big theatres, are being used for musicals more. Gypsy going in to the Savoy, and Funny Girl… the 800 and 900-seat theatres are being used for musicals, and drama will be squeezed out.”

“Is music meant to be ephemeral or enduring? And indeed, are those two goals consonant with one another, or at odds? For those who take as their mentors, our sources of inspiration, and our measures of quality long-dead Germans like Bach, Brahms, and Beethoven, perhaps the ultimate goal would be to write, like they did, something of value that transcends our era. But can one write a piece with the goal that it become ‘an important part of the repertoire’?”

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On Facebook and Twitter I’ve been talking about bad graphic design in classical music. Why does bad design matter? Because we need a new audience. Our new audience comes — will come — from the ... read more

In the online edition of today’s Wall Street Journal, I review a new off-Broadway musical, the stage version of The Band’s Visit. Here’s an excerpt. * * * As delightful as well-done big-budget musicals can ... read more

Edward R. Murrow interviews Marlon Brando on Person to Person. This episode was originally telecast by CBS on April 1, 1955: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in ... read more

Outside Rifftides world headquarters, we’re having the first snowfall of the season. The prediction is for three inches here tonight and an accumulation of as much as a foot in the nearby ski areas of ... read more

The Alvin Ailey America Dance Theater at City Center, November 30-December 31. Rachel McLaren and Jamar Roberts of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Company in Johan Inger’s Walking Mad. Photo: Yi-Chun Wu Not long after ... read more

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more ... read more

One thing I know about Brett Gorvy, Christie’s departing chairman of Post-War and Contemporary art, is that he’s very smart—probably the savviest auction-house specialist I’ve ever encountered. So it’s almost impossible not to interpret his ... read more

For the many of us reeling from the recent election, middle class communities are much on our minds. I’ve written about it twice already: Blindsided and Should We Bother? I thought it might be good ... read more

As a result of the recent redesign of The Wall Street Journal, my drama reviews will now appear throughout the week rather than on Fridays only. In today’s paper I cover the Broadway transfer of ... read more

From 2003: I’m glad to be a self-made man, and I also find it surprisingly useful to have been born into a small-town family. For one thing, the experience of growing up in southeast Missouri ... read more

“Beauty frightens and offends the nihilist. It’s a reproach to his sense of unbounded self-importance. Beauty cannot be ignored, so it must be vandalized.” Patrick Kurp, “‘Our Lives Are Judged’” (Anecdotal Evidence, October 10, 2016) ... read more

Wolfgang Muthspiel, Rising Grace (ECM) The Austrian Guitarist Muthspiel is the leader, but he and his sidemen are so wrapped together in the music on <em>Rising Grace</em> that they might have been billed as a ... read more

This is the fourth anniversary of Dave Brubeck’s death at age 91. Under the heading, “Always remembered, never forgotten,” John Bolger sent a message that included this photograph of Brubeck as listeners remember him from ... read more

Prospero with sturdy staff and Ariel with extreme D.A.. Photo credit: Topher McGillis (RSC) In 1993 I was lucky enough to see Simon Russell Beale, then a sprightly 32-year-old, play Ariel in Sam Mendes’ ... read more

Sid Caesar is interviewed by Edward R. Murrow on Person to Person. This episode was originally telecast by CBS on October 1, 1954: (This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that ... read more